Sunday, October 31, 2010

Today's show wrapped up this year's batch of Halloween related episodes. For the last episode I broadcast the entire score from Kenneth Anger's short film "Lucifer Rising."

Here is Anger's short film "Invocation of My Demon Brother," which is made of material from the original version of "Lucifer Rising" that was never completed. The music in this film is composed by Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones. The audio on this video includes Anger's commentary track from "The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. II" DVD.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Listeners to 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona, MN will be treated to two episodes of Sounds of Cinema this Halloween weekend.

First, the Sounds of Cinema Halloween Special will air at 11pm on Saturday, October 30th. This program will be an hour of music, with minimal interuptions and include audio clips and musical selections from a wide variety of Halloween-related films.

Second, the regularly scheduled episode of Sounds of Cinema will air at the usual time, at 9am on Sunday, October 31st. This episode will feature Bobby Beausoleil's entire score from Kenneth Anger's short film, Lucifer Rising.

Monday, October 25, 2010

In the lead up to Halloween, there are a number of film screenings going on in the Winona area.

Wednesday, October 27th - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The Winona State University Sociology club will be screening the original A Nightmare on Elm Street at 7pm in Minne 103. A discussion about scary movies and Halloween will follow.

Thursday, October 28th - Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The WSU English Department's Student Life Committee will be screening the original Night of the Living Dead at 7pm in the Smaug (the lower level of the student union). Snacks will be provided.

Friday, October 29th - Vampyr (1932)
The Fringe Friday Committee is coordinating a showing of the 1932 silent horror movie Vampyr, played to live music, at the Masonic Lodge in Winona at 7pm.

These are some great and important movies and I encourage you all to get out and get scared.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Today's show continued the month-long Halloween theme with a look back at two very controversial films: Cannibal Holocaust and American Psycho.

Cannibal Holocaust Cannibal Holocaust was directed by Italian filmmaker Ruggero Deodato. The film premiered in Italy in 1980 and played very successfully for a few weeks. Sergio Leone, the director of films like The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America sent a letter to Deodato that said, “Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world."

That prediction came true, and the film was seized by Italian authorities and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested on the belief that this was a snuff film. Although Deodato was exonerated of murder charges, Cannibal Holocaust was labeled obscene due to footage of real animals killed at the hands of the actors, and the film was caught in legal limbo for years. The film did not appear in the United States until 1985 but when it did, it was given an X-rating and so its circulation was limited.

In other territories Cannibal Holocaust was heavily cut or banned outright. It is hard if not impossible to determine how many countries actually banned the film, although numbers as high as thirty to fifty have been suggested. If those numbers are correct, Cannibal Holocaust would probably be the most widely banned film of all time. There is some nuance to film bans since a cut version of Cannibal Holocaust is now allowed in locations such as the United Kingdom and Germany, although the complete version is still banned in both places.

Despite the thirty years that have passed since its premiere, Cannibal Holocaust remains a lightning rod of controversy for its animal killings, the portrayal of indigenous people, and the extreme anti-personal violence. But I think most of those explanations are red herrings that distract us from what Cannibal Holocaust is really about, why it really distresses the audience, and why it is distinct and important among horror films.Cannibal Holocaust is not troubling to the audience for any one charge made against it, but for its cumulative effect. The barbarity of the animal killings, the display of economic and sexual exploitation, and the acts of violence craft a vision of humanity darker than the stories of Joseph Conrad or William Golding. There is a totality to its nihilistic presentation of humanity that stamps out hope.

When a viewer watches a horror film, he or she intentionally submits him or herself to trauma. Most mainstream horror films like Jaws or Psycho scare us and thrill us but in the end leave viewers knowing that good has triumphed over evil and all is right with the world. More challenging horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes do not offer quite the same solace of a closed resolution but generally there is a survivor who we can empathize with and whose self-preservation is a source of relief. These films have a cathartic effect on the viewer, allowing him or her to experience terror and fear from the safety of the theater seat and then walk away to carry on with his or her life.

Cannibal Holocaust refuses to engage in this kind of pattern. It piles on the awfulness and as the rapes and murders accumulate, the film abandons all unwritten agreements of propriety between the filmmaker and the audience. For those who expect to see a liberal humanist notion of human decency emerge from the darkness, the film offers a moral black hole. And in this, Cannibal Holocaust confronts an awful truth.

We spend much of our time avoiding the truth. Psychologists tell us that we create fantasies and dreamscapes to escape them. We subterfuge desire and convince ourselves that we are civilized by building libraries and court houses and creating laws and philosophy. And we reject those things that do not coalesce with our collective assumptions.

Cannibal Holocaust is most awful and unendurable at the moments that it shows us things we are aware of subconsciously but would never want to see and are loath to admit about ourselves and our species. But these things exist. Genital mutilation and honor killings occur. Sexual and economic exploitation are real (and sometimes connected, as they are in the film). We live at a time when religious fundamentalists videotape themselves cutting off the heads of their enemies and broadcast the footage on the internet for all to see. Unscrupulous media hacks cherry pick video clips to distort our view of reality. Such things are not defeated by illusions of hope.

From time to time, an artist, either by accident, madness, or intent, creates a work that violates our collective assumptions. From Marquis de Sade to Bret Easton Ellis, there are those who create pieces of art that aren’t merely incendiary, but attack the most cherished and sacred illusion of all: the spiritual and moral development of humanity. Ruggero Deodato accomplished this in Cannibal Holocaust and his film is simultaneously profound and obscene. And that tension is exactly why I think it merits a place at the table, even if—or because—its appetite is exclusively for flesh and blood.

American Psycho
First released in 1991, American Psycho was the third novel by author Bret Easton Ellis and the book was a source of controversy before it was ever published. The novel American Psycho includes very detailed descriptions of women being tortured and murdered and when pages including these descriptions were leaked, they caused an uproar. Enraged feminist organizations protested the book before it was even on the shelves and convinced Simon & Schuster to drop the project. Vintage Books picked up the manuscript and published it in paperback form. After its publication, author Bret Eason Ellis was the recipient of death threats and the book became a prop for demonstrations, such as when a protestor entered a bookstore and poured blood on copies of the novel.

Although there were various efforts to mount a movie adaptation, American Psycho was considered un-filmable until screenwriter Guinevere Turner and co-screenwriter and director Mary Harron took on the project for a film that was released in 2000.

American Psycho was a moderate box office success although its take was far less than a lot of film released before and after such as Scream or Saw.

The film had mixed reactions from critics. Most of the reviews were positive, such as Roger Ebert who wrote, “Christian Bale is heroic in the way he allows the character to leap joyfully into despicability; there is no instinct for self-preservation here, and that is one mark of a good actor.”

Negative reviews criticized the film for being as vacuous as the characters it was condemning. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon wrote, “If 'American Psycho' worked better as a thriller or a comedy or some combination of the two, its reason for existing would be much easier to explain. As it is, the picture seems to exist solely for self-congratulation, as a kind of sacred text designed to remind us (as if we could ever forget) how ridiculous we all were some 10 or 15 years past -- and to toll a half-hearted warning, in darkly comic tones, that we may be headed that way again.”

Since its release, American Psycho’s legacy has been aided by a few factors. One of them is the rise of Christian Bale to movie star status which he has done primarily on the success of his Batman pictures with Christopher Nolan. Another is the media environment of postmodern satire that we now live in. Cable channels like Comedy Central have made irony their major export with programming like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and online entertainment like funnyordie.com has created a market for self conscious work.

The legacy of American Psycho has also been aided by events in the world of economics and politics. Historical films, whether they are placed in the distant past or recreate recent episodes, are made in order to parallel and comment upon current events. The collapse and bailout of Wall Street, scandals involving corporations like Enron and Halliburton, and the corruption of government institutions like the Department of Interior under the Bush administration, have made this film immediately relevant again. Patrick Bateman surrogates have been and are running things and the extreme interpersonal violence that the fictional character commits is a metaphor for the institutional violence that is wrought on the lower and working classes.

At the same time there is another cultural dimension in which American Psycho is again relevant. The 1980s were characterized by an emphasis on bodies and physical perfection. Although this has never really gone away, the plethora of messages selling us bodily improvement and perfection, from mail order diet plans, to reality television programs, to pharmaceutical sexual enhancement, is at a level never seen before. American Psycho is a story about a character who constantly rips and tears through the superficial layers of name brand clothes, inedible designer food, and finally human flesh. Patrick Bateman’s rage at the vacuity of his existence is a reaction to a state of 1980s culture that corresponds to our contemporary consumer culture.
Ten years after its original release, American Psycho’s message about superficiality is as on target as ever. In 2000 it was a film ahead of its time and now that our age has caught up with it, it’s time to revisit Patrick Bateman and consider what this story has to say.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

I have made two items related to the screening of Cannibal Holocaust publicly available.

First is the audio from the panel discussion that followed the screening. The panel includes Nick Ozment and Andrea Wood of the Winona State English Department and they discuss the controversy of the film and how to evaluate and understand it. You can download the audio file here.

Cannibal Holocaust is not troubling to the audience for any one charge made against it, but for its cumulative effect. The barbarity of the animal killings, the display of economic and sexual exploitation, and the parallel acts of violence craft a vision of humanity darker than the stories of Joseph Conrad or William Golding. There is a totality to its nihilistic presentation of humanity that stamps out hope.

When a viewer watches a horror film, he or she intentionally submits him or herself to trauma. Most mainstream horror films like Jaws or Psycho scare us and thrill us but in the end leave viewers knowing that good has triumphed over evil and all is right with the world. More challenging horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes do not offer quite the same solace of a closed resolution but generally there is a survivor who we can empathize with and whose self preservation is a source of relief. These films have a cathartic effect on the viewer, allowing him or her to experience terror and fear from the safety of the theater seat or the living room sofa and then walk away to carry on with his or her life.

Cannibal Holocaust refuses to engage in this kind of pattern. It piles on the awfulness and as the rapes and murders accumulate, the film abandons all unwritten agreements of propriety between the filmmaker and the audience. For those who expect to see a liberal humanist notion of human decency emerge from the darkness, the film offers a moral black hole. For those who demand a meaningful resolution where death is not in vain, the film offers none. And for those who want to preserve hope in humanity, Ruggero Deodato cinematically gives his audience the finger. In short, Cannibal Holocaust tells the truth.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Thank you to everyone who came to the Cannibal Holocaust screening. The program was well attended and everyone at it was well behaved despite the difficulty of the subject matter.

Additional thanks to Andrea Wood and Nick Ozment of the Winona State University English Department for agreeing to participate in the panel discussion. Audio of their remarks during the discussion can be heard on Sounds of Cinema this Sunday, October 24th.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Remember that your chance to attend a free screening of Cannibal Holocaust occurs tomorrow, October 18th, at 7pm in Science Lab 120 on the Winona State University campus. A panel discussion about the film will follow.

Please keep in mind that the screening is limited to viewers over 18 years of age.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

89.7 KMSU FM is currently broadcasting its fall pledge drive. Those of you who listen to the station, either directly or from 91.3 FM in Austin or 91.9 FM in Fairmont and Albert Lea, please consider contributing.

KMSU is dependent upon listener support to function. This station is an important part of the campus and the community. Your donations allow the station to continue to function so that we can keep the programing coming to you.

To make a pledge, please call 507-389-5678 or 1-800-456-7810. You can also pledge online here.

This Sunday, October 10th, Sounds of Cinema will broadcast a special pledge drive edition of the show on KMSU. Those listening on 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona will hear the regularly scheduled episode.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Today's episode of Sounds of Cinema examined a pair of horror films released just weeks apart in the spring on 1980: The Shining and Friday the 13th.

The Shining represents the last gasp of a certain kind of horror film that hasn’t really been seen since. In the 1960s, under directors like Alfred Hitchcock, the horror film was considered a fairly respectable genre and throughout the 1970s Hollywood studios had financed high profile, star driven horror pictures like The Exorcist, The Omen, and Jaws. After The Shining, the genre gave way to the low budget thrills of Friday the 13th and its imitators. The Shining is paced less like a rollercoaster ride and more like a psychological study of madness and as a result, the film is stylistically anachronistic even for 1980 when the film was released.

The Shining was not well received upon its release. Critics considered it inferior to Kubrick’s accomplishments on films like Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Dr. Strangelove. This may have been unavoidable due to the fact that it is a horror film, placing it a genre that critics are loath to admire, and the impenetrable nature of the mystery and Kubrick’s intellectual style were off-putting. Variety wrote, “The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.” Fans of the Stephen King novel were upset by Kubrick’s abandonment of the book and King himself later confessed a great disappointment with the film. King later produced a made-for-TV remake of The Shining that aired in 1997.

The Shining was nominated for Razzie Awards for worst actress and worst director for films of 1980. Yet, the film has survived and even thrived. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Sydney Pollack, and William Friedkin have praised the film and it has become a popular film for scholars to analyze. In 2001, The Shining was ranked 29th on AFI's '100 Years...100 Thrills' list and the character Jack Torrance was named one of the greatest villains on the AFI's '100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains' list.

Viewing The Shining three decades after its original release, the film is still harrowing viewing. Whatever the faults of the film, and it certainly does have its shortcomings, The Shining is an excellent example of the use of visuals and sound and at its best the film manages to put a face on evil that is as interesting as it is frightening.

Like The Shining, Friday the 13th was received negatively by critics upon its release but unlike The Shining its reputation with critics has never recovered. At the time of its release, Friday the 13th was protested by critics such as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel who used their syndicated television program to attack the film makers for creating it, Paramount for distributing it, and recognizable actress Betsy Palmer for participating in it. Friday the 13th and its contemporaries and imitators were also a target of feminists who saw slasher films as misogynist and by social conservatives who objected to the sex and violence of the films. Releasing Friday the 13th was also a controversial decision among stockholders and executives at Paramount who were not proud of the film and saw it as tarnishing the history of a studio that had put out classics like The Godfather.

Friday the 13th was a trend setter, as it inspired a wave a slasher films made by independents and distributed by major studios. And this new business model had major repercussions. To compare, The Shining cost $19 million but made $44 million in its domestic theatrical run. The original Friday the 13th cost about 500 thousand dollars to make but made $5 million in its opening weekend and grossed $40 million in its theatrical run. The cost-to-profit ratio alone made slashers good business sense and they dominated both the horror genre and American film at large for the decade. This business model would pay off a decade later as independent films like Reservoir Dogs and Clerks were found major distribution deals.

Although the aggressive marketing campaigns that accompanied the theatrical releases of Friday the 13th deserve a lot of the credit for their box office success, the continued popularity of these slasher films has been largely fan driven. Friday the 13th has thrived in ways that The Shining never could primarily because of a devoted fan base. Like fans of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, the fans of Friday the 13th have responded to this series, despite its faults, and invested time and energy into coordinating conventions and maintaining websites. And in their efforts the fans have ensured that this little film will be remembered for decades to come.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

As has been tradition on Sounds of Cinema, the month of October will be dedicated to Halloween-related programming. In years past, each October episode had taken broad approaches, with each show taking on subgenres or periods of films. This year will be a bit different. The year 2010 marks significant anniversaries for quite a few important films and throughout this year's batch of October episodes, Sounds of Cinema will take a close look at a few particular movies.

October 3 - Friday the 13th and The Shining
Released within weeks of each other in the spring of 1980, Friday the 13th and The Shining came from completely opposite ends of the film making scene. Since their release, both of these film have become classics of the horror genre and represent both the beginning and end of respective eras of the American horror film.

October 10 - Psycho and Peeping TomPsycho and Peeping Tom were released in 1960 and the two films are remarkably similar in their examination of psychologically disturbed characters. Although both films are now considered important entries in the horror genre, Psycho was tolerated by the critical establishment while Peeping Tom was not and the failure of the film critically and financially ended director Michael Powell's career.

Update:Those listening to the show from 89.7 KMSU FM in Mankato will hear a special pledge drive edition of Sounds of Cinema on October 10th.

October 17 - Bride of Frankenstein and The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Universal Studios released an entire catalogue of horror films such as Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and all of their sequels and spin offs. Widely considered among the greatest of these films is Bride of Frankenstein. Influenced by Bride of Frankenstein as well as many other monster films of the 1940s and 50s, Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in 1975 to a disastrous reception but in years that followed it became the ultimate cult film.

October 18 - Film Screening: Cannibal Holocaust
A public screening of Cannibal Holocaust will be held at 7pm in Science Lab Auditorium 120 (between Pasteur and Stark Halls) on the Winona State University campus. Admission is free but no one under 18 will be permitted to see the film. A panel discussion will follow the screening. Find out more about the film and the screening here.

October 24 - Cannibal Holocaust and American Psycho
This episode will take on two films known for their controversial material. Released in 1980, Cannibal Holocaust quickly became one of the most widely censored films of all time. Its highly realistic scenes of human murder as well as actual footage of animal cruelty were cause for protest and even legal prosecution. In years since, the film has gained renewed relevance as a commentary on documentary films and the exploitation of developing cultures by industrialized cultures. In 2000, director Mary Harron adapted Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, probably the most controversial piece of literature in the last quarter of the 20th century, into a commentary on the culture of greed of the 1980s. On the tenth anniversary of the film's release, that commentary has found renewed relevance.

October 31 - Lucifer RisingLucifer Rising was one of the final films by experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger. His production of Lucifer Rising was complicated by rivalries and disasters big and small. This episode will include the complete score for Lucifer Rising composed by former Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil.

Friday, October 1, 2010

As a part of this year's October programming, Sounds of Cinema is sponsoring a public screening of Cannibal Holocaust on the Winona State University campus at 7pm in Science Lab 120 (between Pasteur and Stark Halls) on October 18th. A panel discussion featuring WSU faculty will follow. Admission is free. Due to the content of the film, no one under 18 years old will be admitted.